The Beijing International School Expo (BISE) is the city’s largest gathering of international schools with the aim of helping families choose better education options. This year’s BISE will be held on February 18-19, 2017 from 10am-4pm at the Crowne Plaza Beijing Chaoyang U-Town. Importantly, the BISE is a completely free event to attend, however, we advise pre-registering to avoid unnecessary queues.

Over 60 Schools Represented
Parents will have the opportunity to personally meet representatives from over 60 schools, and have candid conversations with school officials that know best. The schools represented span a range of curricula, and include both Beijing-based and overseas K-12 institutions.

Lecture Series
The 2017 BISE is not only the perfect place to find the right school for your kids – it also serves as a rich learning environment for parents. Hear expert advice on a range of pertinent issues from invited guest speakers.

Starter’s Scholarship
This year’s BISE will also feature on-site competition, whereby 12 talented children will get cash for school as well as have their work published in our magazines. Our Starter’s Scholarships – awarded on the basis of a drawing competition (for younger kids) and an essay-writing competition (for older students) – is an opportunity to let your child shine.

Children’s Activity Area
The children’s activity area includes enough entertainment to keep the little ones occupied, so that parents can focus on talking with school representatives. The sections will be run by educational institutions but geared towards younger children under the age of 10.

Pre-Registration
To pre-register for the BISE, click here or scan the QR code below

Mark Twain famously said that schooling should not be allowed to interfere with education and a number of people have tried to put this idea into practice. And yet secondary education in the way it’s structured and imparted hasn’t changed much since the 19th century. Does “old school” deserve the regard and respect we attach to this term? To discuss this, Oksana Boyko is joined by prominent Indian educator, Prof Sugata Mitra.

Lesley Keast talks to TEDxKazimierz about the School in the Cloud and how every Sunday morning she goes on a journey to India where she interacts with school kids as a Skype Granny.

Lesley Keast is the Diploma Course Leader for the British Council in Madrid and has also taught Universidad de Alcalá’s MA TESOL course since 2007. She presented her own MA research at IATEFL Harrogate in 2014. She has taught in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Hungary and was the Director of Studies of a progressive international school in the UK.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community

Star Wars day is almost here – May the Fourth be with you! Two things to know about us here at Namecheap: we love Star Wars and we love saving you money on our top-tier products. In honor of May the Fourth, aka Star Wars Day, you can get a .XYZ domain for our lowest price ever – just 44 cents – when you use the coupon code THEFOURTH. Be sure to check out the deals on all our products during this promo too.

In March, a Dutch student called Shawn Buckles placed his personal data on the market. He offered to hand over all of his most intimate electronic matter—e-mails, health records, calendars, geolocational data—to the highest bidder. By mid-April, Buckles had received 53 offers. The winner of the auction was The Next Web, a popular site for technology news. It shelled out $480 for his data soul.

Buckles—who is more of an activist than an entrepreneur—succeeded in raising awareness about the strange economics of data. As the suave futurologists at the World Economic Forum in Davos noted in a 2011 report, our personal data is rapidly becoming a new “asset class.” Companies like Google and Facebook have mastered the art of monetizing their store of information about our personal tastes and traits. But the subjects of that information—namely, you and me—don’t share any of the profits from these transactions. It was only a matter of time, therefore, before individuals like Buckles began to revolt against this system, selling their own data rather than just letting Silicon Valley exploit it.

Technology companies have a response to this rebellious logic: Sure, users relinquish their data to be harnessed and sold by giant corporations,but look at all the wonderful and nominally free services that they get in return. But is that even the case? What if the real value of our data is much greater than the utility of those services? And far more profoundly, Buckles’s clever stunt raises a philosophical question: Should we even be allowed to sell our most intimate data in the first place? Or should governments discourage or even prohibit such transactions, perhaps, on moral grounds?

On one level, the case for permitting individuals to sell their data is clear cut. It’s only fair: Since companies can already trade this data, it would be absurd to ban individuals from selling it. Furthermore, there’s immense social value in this data—and we should encourage its altruistic use. Why stop people who want to give away their health records to universities or hospitals to contribute to scientific discoveries? Ideally, we might want them to do so for humanitarian reasons, but one can think of moments when the promise of immediate monetary compensation might get the job done faster.

My dad was vigilant in protecting my privacy. He never allowed me to go anywhere without telling him first. And when I didn’t follow his instructions, there was hell to pay. Father’s who lead by example may be in short supply, however, the must still protect their baby’s privacy before anyone else. For as long as there’s been humans, father’s have been the primary protectors of babies. Mothers may nurture and feed babies, but it’s to the dad’s of the world the family looks for safety and security.

You may take this for granted in the concrete jungles of South Africa and elsewhere in the industrialised world. The more people in your “tribe” or group, the less privacy you can expect. And on a recent weekend retreat in Tsitsikama, Eastern Cape, I was introduced to the liberterian philosophy of the Consent Axiom explained by Trevor Watkins:

I believe that the basis for successful human coexistence can be reduced to a single statement, a single concept. This statement is the Consent Axiom: No action without consent.

This statement is as brief and uncompromising as the biblical 5th commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”. Like most 4 word sentences, some further elaboration is required for better understanding.

Your Baby’s Privacy is Important

Of course a 1-year old baby cannot give consent to it’s photo being published for everyone to see on LinkedIn. Therefore it should not be published on any social networks. All parents must take the long term view before posting family photos and protect their baby’s privacy like it’s their own. Nobody will post photos of their bank account statements, so why do you post photos of your children without their consent?

This morning I stumbled across one of the many personal things people share on social media. A father, Patrick Korie, shared his baby’s 1-year photo on LinkedIn asking people to “wish” her happy birthday. The likes and comments were streaming onto the cute photo of the baby playing with the laptop. I decided NOT to like this and wished I could ask him this question, “Why do you abuse your baby’s privacy on social media?”

Reminder to Parents about Privacy

Parents, please stop sharing your baby photos on social media. When they grow up, they will not be happy with all this exposure unless you want them to become attention seeking reality-show watching crybabies with low self-esteem. A baby’s privacy is not more or less important than those of an adult, it’s of equal importance. Please remember and we will keep remind you to avoid this stupidity. Someone once told me, the way you know you’ve raised your children successfully, is when they don’t want to be famous!

“Wikipedia is not only valuable because of the free information it provides, it also allows South Africans to tell our stories to the world,” says Ramon Thomas, founder of NETucation, who first used the Internet in 1993 in Port Elizabeth. “The most valuable contributions I’ve made is to expand articles about people and places I know very well across South Africa.” Since 2006 he started to edit in English and Afrikaans Wikipedia.

Before 2001, an encyclopedia would cost thousands of Rands, trees, water and ink, and it was really really hard to carry around. Today Wikipedia provides millions of referenced articles, photos, illustrations, sources, and word definitions right at your fingertips. The volunteers who have been creating this amazing work for 15 years don’t charge anything for it. They want to share all the world’s knowledge with every person alive today.

“I discovered that if I don’t edit, no one will edit,” says Bobby Shabangu, a member of the Wikimedia ZA board of directors. “I wanted to activate people into talking about Wikipedia and the work they do and everything…that’s actually how I got involved with the whole thing.” Since late 2012, he began to edit both the Swati and English Wikipedia.

About Wikimedia ZA

The WikiProject South Africa is a collaborative effort to improve coverage on South Africa and the organisation of information and articles on this topic. This WikiProject is part of the WikiProject Africa and aims primarily to help coordinate and improve pages on South Africa, History of South Africa and South Africans. Wikimedia ZA, is national not-for-profit, created to promote the interests of Wikimedia projects within South Africa.

About NETucation

NETucation provides training on how to be smart and safe, online. We empower teenagers, teachers, parents and professionals for the Internet age. Since 2004 we have delivered over 500 seminars and workshops to Michaelhouse, St Alban’s College, St Mary’s DSG, the Crawford and Curro Schools, etc. We also participate in government and public forums with the Film & Publications Board and Childline South Africa; while publishing ebook like the “Parent’s Guide to MXit” and “Privacy is Possible.”

Dan Sullivan notes that successful entrepreneurs have a certain mindset around their experiences in life that greatly contributes to their success and happiness. They see every experience in life either as a win or as learning.

The Italian physician and educator, Maria Montessori, famously once said: “Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavour always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence”; and now two girls are helping to ensure that this light continues to burn for school children across South Africa with a rather innovative concept…Leaving school and walking home is so often fraught with danger every day for thousands of school children across Africa. Travelling along busy roads with little to no light only to get home and attempt to complete their homework under similar lighting conditions has long proved a challenging issue with long term societal impacts.Now two school friends turned business partners are looking to change all this, helping to provide for underprivileged communities through an innovative and environmentally friendly concept – the repurpose schoolbag.

The first green initiative from founding company Rethaka, set up by Thato Kgatlhanye and Rea Ngwane, the pair, now 22, are taking full advantage of the overflowing plastic waste in their region and neighbouring communities to upcycle it into 100% recycled plastic schoolbags for local disadvantaged school children.

Not only are the bags made from recycled materials, helping with the environmental issue in the country, but it doubles as a light and features reflective materials, providing a safety aspect so the children are more visible walking home in rush hour traffic.

With a solar panel positioned in the flap of the bag, charging as the children walk to school, it subsequently allows sufficient light walking home and enough to finish their homework in the evenings. Many households have to rely on candle light after dusk, but these are often rationed, so the school bag will also impact positively on family life too.

“One of the first obstacles these kids face if not being able to finish their homework. If a child doesn’t have access to light then as soon as the sun goes down there is not time to do anything but sleep,” Co-founder, Thato Kgatlhanye, explains.

The two girls carried out a 6-month trial period at the beginning of last year, distributing the recycled bags to schools across the Rustenburg region, and producing 1,000 bags from the period August to December.

Each bag currently costs R250 (US$20) to manufacture, which helps to cover both the production and employee costs. Producing up to 20 bags a day in its workshop, the company presently employs eight full time workers, with the girls hoping to increase this to 12 by the end of the year to help meet its target to produce 10,000 bags this year alone.

Helping to distribute these upcycled school bags to children, the company has targeted and teamed up with local individuals to achieve funding and corporate social investment in a bid to sponsor the production of each bag, ensuring the process remains sustainable with plenty of room to grow and expand into surrounding African communities.

Of course, it is not always easy to start and run a business, especially at the age the girls are and with a subject so integral and prominent to the region. Challenges have arisen along the way, particularly with the lack of infrastructure for plastic recycling but a quick solution was to simply create this themselves which has resulted in a positive and sustainable outcome.

The children have been encouraged to collect and bring in the plastics themselves and feel involved in the whole process from the very beginning to the end.

“The plastic comes to our workshop where we process them into a textile, sew it up with industrial sewing machines and then we distribute,” Kgatlhanye explains.

The concept of recycling and upcycling, although a foreign concept to so many children in the region, has helped to generate interest and knowledge. “Kids are picking up litter around the community,” explains Kgatlhanye.

With distribution underway, the recycled school bag is really a testament to both Thato and Rea and their evident entrepreneurial skills and flair for innovation, even from such a young age. Now clear role models for the children they are helping to provide support to, Thato Kgatlhanye has been recognised for her business ventures; selected for an internship in New York to work alongside the American best-selling author, Seth Godin and in 2014, she was selected as one of the 18 South African social entrepreneurs to attend the 10-day Red Bull Amaphiko Academy.

Perhaps most impressively though, Kgatlhanye was selected as the 2014 first runner-up of the Anzisha Prize, winning $15,000 in prize money.

In an online Q&A session held earlier this year on the Anzisha Prize’s Facebook page, Kgatlhanye explained: “My advice is simple: bootstrap and find competitors to enter your business idea into. Firstly it is a great way to get free business support and advice. Secondly, it’s a great networking opportunity to meet high-profile business people – who usually judge these competitions – and potentially get mentorship from them. Finally, if you end up a winner, you will not only get a cash prize but also get some PR out of it.

“Get a business coach, be honest, leave the ego at the door and hustle,” she concluded.

Looking to the future for this young company and both girls hope to develop further products using 100% recycled materials, including different bag designs and raincoats. With major clients including PwC and Standard Bank already on-board, venturing into other communities is assuredly something we will be seeing in the not so distant future for Rethaka and its ingenious school bag concept.